Posts by corestore

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Re: How the fsck...

That's what a 'ban' is - a legal decree that some thing is not allowed. It won't 100% prevent people from playing it but it will mean that anyone selling it to Australia will be breaking the law."

Small typo there, let me fix: "anyone selling it *IN* Australia will be breaking the law"

I'm in America. I can sell anything I like within *American* law. Including games to Australia. Aussie law applies in Australia and only in Australia. This is a textbook example of what I call 'Canute Syndrome'; legislating it as if there's a little local internet for local people.

Now if they want to make it illegal to BUY certain games in Australia, criminalize the purchaser... well they can go down that road, but they'll look very very foolish, and rather authoritarian.

Here's a bloody good question...

Google, Apple, et. al. responded to the Snowden revelations by taking precautions to help their customers stay secure from snooping - crypto on the backbone, crypto on by default, etc etc.

What measures are mobile telcos taking to protect *their* customers from the revelations of Stingray and similar devices? Have they designed and/or implemented protocols to ensure their devices only connect to genuine cell towers? If not, why not, and what do they intend to do?

No-one seems to be asking this obvious question; I think El Reg should, and be persistent about it...

"But you can still carry out the investigation during their notice period, and take any action deemed necessary"

Well if they disregard their notice period and quit on the spot, you can't even do that - although that's obvious a breach of contract and would leave them legally on the hook for that breach.

As for reference, I don't know if there's any case or statute law in this area; IANAL. But I would imagine that anything goes WRT the reference, so long as it's factually accurate - which it would be in this case. But I think the most common approach is simply to decline to provide a reference; says it all, without exposure to legal risk.

(But then that raises other dangers; an unscrupulous employer could raise a fatuous and fake disciplinary issue, for the sole purpose of having half a legal leg to stand on when giving an unjustified and spiteful bad reference...)

Why illegal? Ask the construction industry; they maintained a secret blacklist for years - a blacklist of union members and activists, and workers who had 'form' for objecting to safety violations. They got in a huge amount of hot water for it, and it's not over yet...

Congratulation!

"Police arrived, took statements and issued her with a “prevention of harassment” (PoH) letter. This is a piece of paper, for which the police have no legal authority to create or enforce, which can be used in court as evidence that a “course of conduct of harassment” took place. PoH letters can be issued before any serious investigation has taken place."

Now you know what sex workers have been subjected to for *decades*.

Google 'prostitute's caution'.

It's like a normal caution, it appears on CRB checks, and it will generally have a severely negative impact on employment prospects.

Except, unlike a normal caution, there's no law whatsoever authorising or defining it, the police have just thought it up and implemented it on their own. Unlike a normal caution, it requires no evidence whatsoever, and you don't have to have broken any laws to get one; mere suspicion is sufficient. Unlike a normal caution, you don't have to admit guilt or accept it; the police simply impose it on the woman. And unlike a normal caution, there's no possible appeal because, legally, it doesn't exist!

Re: 'ello Tosh....

DING, ding a thousand times ding.

New sets (does anyone still call them 'sets'?) tend to be delivered with brightness and saturation set way too high, on the basis that this will somehow make them stand out and look good in a bright showroom display - but is totally counterproductive in the home.

As a cinematographer it really pisses me off to know that so often my work won't be seen as intended; first thing you need to do with a new TV is calibrate it properly to your room.

Re: Sony

What is this 'Sony' of which you speak?

People make the same mistake with Sony that they make with IBM - more so, even. Sony isn't a monolithic entity, it's a collection of almost separate businesses flying in relatively close formation some of the time.

Back in the mid 1990...

...when I was working for a major computer company I won't name (DEC)...

...I was visiting a customer and spotted Something Interesting in their skip as I was leaving. A brief and successful negotiation with the security bod followed, and I found myself the proud new owner of a top-end Barco 808 projection system (the three tube variety found hanging from boardroom ceilings).

After a brief bit of interface hackery, a bit of fresh white paint, and some serious sweat lifting the thing onto its ceiling mount in our living room... well we became very popular; the Corestore residence was the only place in Cambridge you could watch Babylon 5 on a ten foot screen! :D

Re: Yet another reason..

This isn't about driving licenses. They don't - yet - have ANPR readers for driving licenses!

This is about *cars*.

You don't even have to have a driving license to be the registered keeper of a car. You don't have to be a UK citizen or resident. You don't need a national insurance number, or a driver number. You ONLY need to give your name, and an address where you can be contacted.

Re: Yet another reason..

Oh the insurance company are well aware. I give my address, but declare that the car is mostly stored at a different address, for which I supply the postcode, and they're happy with that.

Is it somehow illegal to own or rent multiple properties? There's no obligation to give the DVLA your main residence address, or the address where the vehicle is kept. All they need is a UK address at which you may be contacted. I know; I asked them.

Two immediate thoughts...

1. "The inability to link IP addresses to individuals poses serious challenges for law enforcement agencies." - well THAT is code for internet passports or ID cards. It's one thing relating an IP address to a name on a bill - hell, copyright infringement lawyers have been doing that for years, going after the account holder (very dubiously). But that's obviously useless for intelligence purposes and NOT what .gov are talking about; they're demanding the ability to identify *individuals* - even on shared internet connections, public WiFi hot spots, internet cafes etc etc. That means some kind of passport or digital fingerprint...

2. There's one obvious hole in this; prepaid (and overseas roaming) cellphones, bought and paid for with cash. There's no paper trail there, no way to identify that with a specific named individual - at least not with present technology...

Companies are sensitive to that mood, and are responding - hence encryption by Google, MS etc.

The cellphone companies will respond by introducing some level of authentication, to ensure that phones will ONLY communicate with genuine base stations. They're majorly pissed about this; it makes them look bad and insecure - they have no incentive to play ball with government here.

"The court ruled that it was reasonable to expect individuals that run a private Wi-Fi network to at least use the standard password security mechanisms available as part of the WLAN network device."

So if they're relying on what are considered 'standard... mechanisms that are... part of the network device', I presume they also have no objection to the use of the unsecured secondary 'guest network' facilities that are also built into many WLAN devices as standard?

Those who live by the sword of 'standard mechanisms' can also die by that same sword.

Re: social acceptance?

NO.

It's not designed for that. The default video behaviour is a ten second clip. If you override that... you can probably get a few minutes before Glass overheats. And you'll drain the battery pretty damn quick too. It's not designed for, or capable of, continuous recording.

The "pervo patch" is to go out and buy a spy camera concealed in a pen. Costs a tenth of what Glass costs, and no-one knows you're using it. Try again!

Re: Great steaming hairy...

It's pointless to try to 'ban' them ever, because anyone trying to record will use *concealables* not *wearables*; they'll hide a better camera with a bigger battery in a hat or lapel or walking stick or... the possibilities are endless.

Oh and as for a few frames: fair use. You certainly CAN use a short part of a copyrighted work; it depends on the amount and the purpose.

Great steaming hairy...

...bollocks!

I've had Glass for a fair while now, and there's no frigging way it could be used to pirate a movie. It's designed to records seconds, or at most minutes, of video at a time.

If you tried to use it to record a frigging movie, first, the quality would be appalling unless you had a neck brace to hold your head still staring straight at the screen for two hours, second it would STILL be crappy quality, and third, it wouldn't work anyway because Glass would overheat and shut down and/or run out of battery long before the movie was half-way through.

If I wanted to pirate a movie by recording a theatrical presentation I could think of 276 ways that would work better than Glass.

This whole idea...

Is wrongheaded and counterproductive.

Post Snowden, cybercrime, and snoopers, there's a real demand for privacy and anonymity online. There's a market; offering those services will sell.

ISPs shouldn't be retaining any data beyond that absolutely necessary for the operation of their systems. If there's a law trying to mandate that they retain more, ISPs will start making a sales point of circumventing it for their customers - by basing certain bits of infrastructure overseas, and by providing packages based around TOR, or TOR-like systems, which largely or entirely negate the value of any data an authoritarian snooping government may try to force them to retain.

There's a market for privacy, and this kind of law will drive ISPs to meet that market.

Hmmm

Quite apart from the offensive 'deemed to be' and 'compelled to remove', how in hell is any of this going to apply to the vast majority of social networking sites, which are based outside Australia and not subject to Aussie laws?!

The elephant in the room is...

Microsoft.

Did they know exactly what the payload - and I use that word deliberately - of the drivers was, when they distributed them as part of Windows update?

Microsoft could be at least as much on the hook here as FTDI. If they knew, they were part of the conspiracy. If they didn't know, they distributed malware (and I can't think of any other description for something designed to brick a device) without doing due diligence.

I've been married 20 years...

To the skeptics...

To the sceptics, consider where this is coming from. This is the **Lockheed Martin Skunk Works**. They don't DO hype. They scarcely do publicity. If you don't understand who they are, and the significance of a public statement from them, do some research! If it was anyone else, I'd have very considerable reservation - but these guys have credibility. This ain't cold fusion.

Oh good...

DING!

"Assault weapon" is an emotive term used mainly by gun-control advocates and their opponents; it doesn't mean quite the same thing as "assault rifle".

Finally someone gets it.

An 'assault rifle' is a medium calibre, medium power military rifle, capable of select-fire (i.e. fully automatic, like a machine gun) operation. Examples would be the British SA80, the American M16, or the Russian AK47.

An 'assault weapon' isn't actually a gun at all. There's no such thing. 'Assault weapon' is a *label*, an invented derogatory neologism, intended to influence public opinion through deliberate confusion with the correct military 'assault rifle' terminology, promulgated by gun control advocates. All it means is a gun which *looks* politically-incorrect. 'scary-looking gun' would be the best transliteration. Even the legal definition is based *entirely* on cosmetic features, because a so-called 'assault weapon' actually WORKS exactly the same as any 'normal', 'less scary-looking' semi-automatic rifle.

What a total hatchet job. I'm not saying you haven't hit on something, but you *totally* miss the point.

"But in an age of soaring prices across the city, the taxi industry has emerged as a striking example of how exclusive some corners of New York have become.

On Thursday, at the city’s first medallion auction in over five years, the largest bid for a “mini-fleet” of two medallions exceeded $2.5 million... individual medallions have also attracted ballooning sums. Today, the average market price is more than $1 million. In November 2008, it was less than $550,000."

Game over, man.

In 2014, there is STILL no way to get from NYC to JFK without changing trains. They built a shiny new train that goes around the airport - but you have to change trains from a normal commuter or subway train to get to it. Gatwick Express, Heathrow Express, OK. JFK Express? LOL. The huge politically connected taxi business with its million dollar medallions is in such tight cahoots with the city that a direct train service would NEVER be allowed.

Re: The police are WRONG

"I favour an alternative explanation: that the British police now truly believe they have the right to state that something's illegal even when that's not the case: "So what if it's not against the law, you shouldn't be doing it anyway."

DING.

There was another wonderful admission on that recently, of the truly innocent 'What, shouldn't I have said that? Why on earth not?' kind, in a connected matter: plod freely confessed that, in dealing with people trying to fly out of the UK, where there was some suspicion that they might have jihadist intentions, one tactic they were using was simply to *make them miss their flights*.

Yep. UK plod openly - nay, proudly - admitted they felt they had the power to deliberately detain people trying to leave the country at airports, not for any articulable legal reason, not for investigation, purely and only to MAKE them miss their flights.